We set out to learn more about the creative process the artist followed to dress up the emblematic Pedralbes Gardens. Fran tells us that, after travelling to Barcelona and visiting the space, he was initially unsure. “Back home I looked again at Marchesa’s work, one dress after another, one collection after another, and countless photos of its creators. The space, the brand, the models, the people from one side to the other, the fountain and that immense stretch of ground where there was nothing,” he says.
Marchesa at Fran Cisneros’s gardens
He went out in search of inspiration in the museums of Madrid, and this came in the form of a notebook. “I started writing in a notebook that I bought at the museum bookstore along with a book on Monet. Through no impetus of my own, the first ideas of what would be my work came to the surface. This is how ‘The Garden of Monet for Marchesa’ came about”, and that – as Fran so finely put it – the garden is conceived so that the guests feel immersed in the same atmosphere as the Monet paintings. As a result, grass paths alternate with a variety of flowerbeds, boulders amidst the vegetation and flashes of black sandstone quartz. But without a doubt, the main protagonists were the hundred-year-old trees that embraced the stage. So too was the path, which was to have nooks that encouraged people to stand and contemplate the garden, helped by the reflection from the candles and lamps in the fountain.
It was months of work until the celebration, and today Fran looks back with satisfaction on the sensations he had when the curtain rose: “At last the doors of the palace were opened and with a firm step appeared a strong woman, yet with a delicate look: absolute beauty and elegance. It was the Marchesa collection which strolled among its guests, trying to go unnoticed, but it was useless, everyone saw it, she is the light.”
Marchesa at Fran Cisneros’s gardens
Learn more about the universe and work of Fran Cisneros on his website and social networks.
